Morrisons to give 10p to dairy farmers

Morrisons are going to try and woo dairy farmers by launching a new brand of milk, where they vow to give 10p of the retail price directly to farmers. You'll know that farmers have been protesting against supermarkets in recent weeks, taking all the milk out of stores and dragging actual cows through shops.

This is all over the amount of money they're taking thanks to supermarkets dropping their prices.

Now, Morrisons shoppers will find, next to the own-brand milk, something called Milk For Farmers, which is available to those who want to support dairy farmers. You suspect most people will automatically go for the cheaper product of the two, so whether this will work or not, remains to be seen.

That said, research by Mintel showed that more than half of consumers would actually be willing to pay a bit more for their cow milk. It'd be nice if, right across the board, all the supermarkets just increased their milk prices slightly in a bid to support producers, but they're all terrified at the moment and won't ever do that.

Martyn Jones, one of the directors at Morrisons, said that this move has been "well received" by farmers' unions. He said: "We recognise that the current market for liquid milk is impacting on hardworking dairy farmers and their families. We want to help."

The supermarket has also asked their milk suppliers to not pass on any further decreases in dairy prices to them, instead, for that money to go back to farmers.

There are plans for farming unions to take their case to the European Commission, while the National Farmers Union want to see all the big retailers to show "clear and transparent" pricing on milk. They want shoppers to know that some supermarkets pay as little as 30p for a litre of milk, but are charging customers £1, which the producers don't see.

NFU President Meurig Raymond told Sky: "The farming industry gets support via the common agricultural policy to take out some of the volatility that we see in market prices, but at the present time even with that support farmers are still losing 8 to 10 pence a litre on their milk that's being produced."

"The average dairy farmer is producing about 2,500 litres of milk per day. You can easily work out how much the average farmer is losing at the present time and that's why a lot of dairy farmers are going to make some big decisions in the next few months."